[tex-live] Install Texlive 2008 "The Pirate Bay" website --- uncompressed

David Kastrup dak at gnu.org
Tue Oct 7 12:05:52 CEST 2008


Patrice Dumas <pertusus at free.fr> writes:

> On Tue, Oct 07, 2008 at 10:40:56AM +0200, David Kastrup wrote:
>> 
>> > If the advertisement restrict the userbase for a legal reason, then it
>> > make sense to change advertisements, but otherwise I see no reason for
>> > discrimination, since free software is also based on
>> > non-discrimination among uses.
>> 
>> You are confused.  Free software gives you the freedom to use it in any
>> way you want.  Advertisements don't give you the freedom not to see them
>> in the first place.  They are designed to convey their message in 5
>> seconds, and the first 2 of them you can hardly avoid.
>> 
>> If I don't like advertisements in my free software, I can remove them,
>> once and for all.  If I don't like advertisements in my software
>> tracker, tough.
>
> I agree that it would be better to avoid advertisements, for the reason
> you state above, but if there are some, I can't see the reason to
> discriminate against different advertisements. Of course the TeXlive team
> may want to, but I can't see on what grounds,

Bad advertising.

> except on moral and then it is censorship (something that the TeXlive
> team may want to do, but it is not obvious).

Pickiness is not the same as censorship.  It is not our duty to support
the advertising of some distributor if we don't want to.

-- 
David Kastrup


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